The concept of man versus machine is at least as old as the industrial revolution, but this phenomenon tends to be most acutely felt during economic downturns and fragile recoveries. And yet, it would be a mistake to think we are right now simply experiencing the painful side of a boom and bust cycle. Certain jobs have gone away for good, outmoded by machines. Since technology has such an insatiable appetite for eating up human jobs, this phenomenon will continue to restructure our economy in ways we can’t immediately foresee.

    When there is exponential improvement in the price and performance of technology, jobs that were once thought to be immune from automation suddenly become threatened. This argument has attracted a lot of attention, via the success of the book Race Against the Machine, by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, who both hail from MIT’s Center for Digital Business.

    This is a powerful argument, and a scary one. And yet, John Hagel, author of The Power of Pull and other books, says Brynjolfsson and McAfee miss the reason why these jobs are so vulnerable to technology in the first place.

    Hagel says we have designed jobs in the U. S. that tend to be “tightly scripted” and “highly standardized” ones that leave no room for “individual initiative or creativity”. In short, these are the types of jobs that machines can perform much better than human beings. That is how we have put a giant target sign on the backs of American workers, Hagel says.

    It’s time to reinvent the formula for how work is conducted, since we are still relying on a very 20th century notion of work. Hagel says. In our rapidly changing economy, we more than ever need people in the workplace who can take initiative and exercise their imagination “to respond to unexpected events”. That’s not something machines are good at. They are designed to perform very predictable activities.

    As Hagel notes, Brynjolfsson and McAfee indeed touched on this point in their book. We need to reframe race against the machine as race with the machine. In other words, we need to look at the ways in which machines can augment human labor rather than replace it. So then the problem is not really about technology, but rather, “how do we innovate our institutions and our work practices?”

答案精析：根据题目可定位到第一段，再根据关键词economic downturns可定位到首段第一句。定位句指出，从工业革命时期开始就有人和机器的竞争了，但这一竞争的感觉在经济衰退（economic downturns）时尤为激烈，由此可以推断出机器给人带来的竞争压力在经济下滑时期尤为突出，B项符合题意，所以正确。

错项排除：第一段表达出机器与人之间的竞争会因经济下滑而加剧，A项与此相反，故排除。C项对应原文第一段第二句，原文指出，我们看起来正在经历一场痛苦的繁荣与萧条的轮回，但这种看法是错误的，而且痛苦一词修饰的是轮回，而不是技革命，故C项排除。D项对应第一段第三句中的经济体制被淘汰一点，但文中说的是被机器生产淘汰而非被经济下滑淘汰，因此排除。